Celestino Vietti claims first pole of the season, ahead of Tony Arbolino and Sam Lowes

Despite the second half of the Q2 session being dominated by Sam Lowes, an exceeding of track limits handed the Pole position to Mooney VR46 Racing Team’s Celestino Vietti, who managed to rise to P2 on his final lap of the session, while demoting Lowes back to 3rd position. Tony Arbolino will begin the race ahead of his ELF Marc VDS Racing Team teammate in P2. 

Filip Salac will head the second row of the grid after an admirable Qualifying. The Czech rider hit the top of the board early in the session, and remained there for some time before Lowes took the provisional pole towards the end of Q2. Despite being bumped off of the front row, Salac ended the session just 0.061s behind the Brit; a strong first Qualifying in the class, for certain. 

FP ruler Augusto Fernandez sits in 6th position on the grid, ahead of Ai Ogura. After a strong start to the Qatar weekend, the Spaniard may still be able to pull off a good result from the second row.

Jake Dixon follows in 7th place, the Brit found his rhythm during Q2 – briefly rising to 3rd on the board. However, yellow flags from Pedro Acosta’s crash lead to Dixon’s lap to be cancelled, and the Inde GASGAS Aspar Team rider had to settle for the third row, ahead of Fermín Aldeguer and Aron Canet.

Pedro Acosta’s crash with four minutes to go meant that the chequered flag came early for the rookie, and so the Red Bull KTM Ajo rider will start from 10th on the grid. While being a very decent position for a debut qualifying session in the class, the performance that Acosta gave on Friday proves that there is more in the Spaniard than 10th; hopefully we’ll see as much in the race.

Other crashes included Marcel Schrotter and Somkiat Chantra, both big hopefuls after their Free Practice results. Schrotter was luckily able to set a time before his Turn 2 crash, and will start from P13, whereas Chantra’s early crash resulted in a default P18 result from Q2. 

Can Sam Lowes recover from Qualifying to continue his Qatar winning streak? 

Moto2’s race will begin at 16:20 Local Time (GMT +3)

Feature Image: MotoGP.com